Speziell für diesen Teardown benötigte Werkzeuge

Einleitung

We got up this morning to news that the new iMacs were out, so we knew what we had to do: start sharpening our suction cups!

Thankfully, this iMac model opens in the same way as previous generations. All you have to do is pull off the magnetically-held display glass with two medium-size suction cups, and then remove the screws holding the LCD in place.

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Thunderbolt claims to provide 10 Gbps throughput for both input and output. It appears that both PCI Express and DisplayPort receive their own 10 Gbps data channel. That's nice, as you don't want your display competing with your external hard drive for bandwidth.

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In the next few steps, we remove many components that are very similar to the last 21.5" iMac.

The WD Caviar Blue hard drive is held to the front bezel by a few screws and, as always, the SATA data/power connectors.

The WD Caviar Blue drive is a non-standard SATA drive. The power connector features 7 pins, rather than the standard 4. The drive also has non-standard firmware. This means you can only use Apple's own hard drives and not any standard after-market SATA drive.

Removing the power supply requires disconnecting the AC inlet cable from the logic board.

The LED driver board comes out next after successfully removing the power supply.

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The new iMac carries a Sony Optiarc optical drive, model number AD-5690H.

The area shaded in red in the third picture is presumably where the optional SSD is housed. The three mounting points within the shaded area have nothing attached to them in our machine, since this option is only available on 2.7 GHz 21.5" iMacs.

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With the help of our trusty iFixit vise (which is made of the same material as our spudgers, and is ESD-safe), we're able to desolder the shield covering the little Bluetooth board to reveal the chip goodies underneath.

The cable was not there, but there is an extra standard SATA data socket on the board along with a proprietary power socket labeled "SSD Power". Not sure where you could get the cable to make it work though.